Thanks for visiting our brand spanking new website. This is a work in progress, an experiment without a version number. Things will change and evolve over time once we figure out what we want to do with this thing. One thing’s for sure—calling this a beta would be just lazy. We don’t wanna be like that, do we? "
Here are some of the themes we think will either finally make their way into mainstream or are there, and keep on on getting stronger in 2010. Tell us what you think in the comments.
by Sami Niemelä Creative Director, Nordkapp
1. Design as a process In 2006, the UK’s Design Council published their seminal paper on Transformation Design. Somehow things kept bubbling under the radar for a few years, but slowly design started to catch up. Meanwhile service design and UX had brought the holistic, human centered thinking into into the collective design consciousness, and [...]
Watercolor paintings and oil paintings look no doubt quite different. The artist had a vision about the desired end result and then selected the painting technique that is best suited to reach it. In any form of art or craft, the tool is always visible in the end result. The same applies to interaction design.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) The most typical process for interaction design is to draw wireframes of screens. After that, a visual designer will start working on the wireframes and designs the visuals. This process and selection of tools will be visible in the end result. Let’s say, if you design [...]
Demos are great for many purposes. The most obvious ones are to communicate the design to someone else, and test the UI with end users. However, in a large design project, the less obvious purposes may be the most important ones.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) A demo or a simulation is the best tool for telling about the ongoing designs for people outside the project. You can try to explain the design intent and use cases with bullet points on paper, but when people see and feel the designs, they will [...]
Agile software methodologies were developed for creating small software applications for company internal use. The process was intended for small software teams. Most certainly, no user experience folks were involved. Anyway, software developer is UI designer’s best friend. If agile makes them perform and feel better, it is good for UI design too. Agile is just very, very different to the traditional UI design process.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) Design process itself is agile. I doubt that there are any interaction or visual designs that were designed with a pure waterfall model. In any challenging design task, when you start to draft solutions, you soon understand if the original design intent that you are aiming [...]
Have you noticed how well a couple of screenshots of UI designs can inspire discussion? In project reviews, technical architecture charts may get a question or two, but when you show UI designs, everyone has an opinion. Although this is sometimes quite annoying (you don’t want to know that someone doesn’t like the color), but I find it quite exciting and positive that our work gets people talking. I think it is finally when people see the UI, they can concretely see how it feels like using the product or service, and that’s the moment when they really start to comment if they have any concerns.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) As a design lead, your work is continuously under critique. It is in the nature of designers to criticize and receive critique. Therefore I have sometimes made the mistake of directly criticizing work of other disciplines. They might not take it very well. Although I must [...]
In the previous posts I’ve discussed issues about leading the design work itself. Now, let’s look at some things related to the design process. Processes are there to help you. The name “process” may sound like something that will limit your creativity, but in fact it does the opposite.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) Milestones are one of your best friends. They force you and the whole team to make decisions, pull all the bits and pieces together into one coherent set. Typically there is a presentation to management and other reviewers at milestones. The desire for positive feedback and [...]
If you are lucky, you can be in charge of a design project where many fundamental areas of the UI will need to be changed compared to the old products. For example, in mobile devices or any embedded (non-PC) software, you may need to design both the hardware and software UI at the same time. In such projects you may be tempted to change everything.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) However, think about the consumers or customers you are designing for. If they will see no familiarity in the product whatsoever, you need to practically educate them again to the new usage conventions, mental models, etc. With good design you can ease this threshold, but it [...]
In any larger design project, the design leader cannot be everywhere. There are so many managers to please, stakeholders to keep happy, designers to meet, usability tests to attend, and so many interesting blog posts to read. So admit it or not, you need to become very picky where to invest your time.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.) Based on the design driver discussion (see #1) you probably quite quickly form an opinion, which parts of your design are the most important ones that make it successful. They are usually those features or properties that product management or marketing can call “unique selling points”. [...]
As a design lead you will be working with different kinds of designers. You naturally want them to be able to use their skills to the max, to contribute as much as possible to the success of the project.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
As a design lead you will be working with different kinds of designers. You naturally want them to be able to use their skills to the max, to contribute as much as possible to the success of the project.
This is a summary of a presentation I made in IxDA Helsinki meet-up on 10th September at Nordkapp.
by Panu Korhonen Managing Director
Defining the mobile phone I have been working with mobile user experience for over 16 years. During this time, the profession of designing for good user experience has changed surprisingly little. In early 1990s, the forerunners of UX (the name and acronym were invented much later) had already a very good understanding of what UX [...]
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